In a professional repair shop, neck re-sets are a common part of restoring a guitar’s playability, especially with old acoustics; instruments stored long-term under full string tension and/or in less-than-ideal heat and humidity suffer the consequences. On a neck, the damage manifests in a bow that makes the guitar unplayable and can’t be remedied with “just” a setup.

Re-setting the neck changes its angle to lower the action, which is often necessary after years of use and because the guitar’s geometry is affected by string tension, wood, and glue failure. The process is most typically undertaken on acoustics, but is also done on full-size and thinline electric archtops.

Recently, I was tasked with a “big” re-set. I don’t normally work on orchestral instruments, but when my friend Mark Burhans, a local fiddler and upright-bass player, asked me to fix his broken Engelhardt ES9, I thought it would be fitting to illustrate the process.

1) One of these things is not like the other. Also, something’s missing…

2) The neck was broken when the bass fell backward and the peghead hit something on the way down. The break was clean, snapping part of the mortise on the bass side and shearing clean on the treble side. The bass had been broken before Mark owned it, and someone re-glued the heel; it held well until the incident. The instrument isn’t all that valuable, and Mark agreed to let me fix it without regard to cosmetic concerns. So, I cleaned and re-glued it, and installed two lag screws to make sure it wouldn’t loosen.

3) I started by making a drill jig from a chunk of 24-ply cabinet plywood, which enabled me o drill the mounting holes clean and square on the center line.

4) The heel was a big chunk of hard maple, so I had to use a big drill. The jig worked great.

5) I cleared my biggest bench to do the work. Still, it was a bit clumsy.

6) I improvised outriggers with two boards clamped across the bench to hold the body upright. This allowed me to view it from the front, to ensure the neck was square.

7) Shop helper Addie Thompson used a long center punch to locate the holes for drilling. Addie is following in the footsteps of her older sister, Ceil, who we documented building a guitar as part of a high-school vocational program.

8) I bored holes in the front of the heel to allow for the bolts, and the wrench to tighten them. After tightening the bolts, I plugged the holes with wood.

9) I dressed the plugs with curly maple that could easily be removed if necessary.

10) Every so often, the shop experiences what we call the Rule of Doubles, when identical instruments are in at the same time. It happened here when another local upright player, Julie Elman, asked if I’d fix a prior bad repair that left the bridge feet on hers fitting poorly.

11) Since it involved repeatedly removing and placing the bridge to test (as happens when fitting the bridge on an archtop guitar), I made a thumbscrew jack to hold the strings in place.

12) I copied the shape of the bridge top and string notches onto a thin piece of wood…

13) …then made a matching block so I could raise or lower the mock-up using a StewMac scissor jack designed for use inside a guitar when gluing loose braces. It worked great.

While these two jobs were interesting and challenging, I’m definitely not going out of my way to work on more uprights!

Dan Erlewine has been repairing guitars for more than 50 years. The author of three books, dozens of magazine articles, he has also produced instructional videotapes and DVDs on guitar repair. From 1986 through his retirement in late 2019, Erlewine was part of the R&D team, and company liaison for Stewart-MacDonald’s Guitar Shop Supply. Today, he operates a repair shop in Athens, Ohio, as well as building replicas of the guitars he made for Albert King and Jerry Garcia in 1972. This column has appeared in VG since March, 2004. You can contact him at danerlewine@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared in VG’s July 2024 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.